Murder at Moot Point (24 page)

“You're not to leave the county, understand,” he said. “Me, I'm feeling the need for some of that ‘unofficial' investigating you keep telling me about.”

When the sheriff slid into the county Bronco wearing his facial scars and a complacent smirk, his deputy said under her breath, “Jesus, you two play rough.”

Chapter 26

As Charlie and Deputy Linda stood watching the Bronco wend its way up to Paige Magill's Dream Emporium, Charlie felt suddenly empowered by the return of her wheels. “Could I give you a lift, Officer?”

“I'd thought maybe Himself would give me a ride back to Chinook, but it doesn't look like it. If it wouldn't be too much trouble?”

“None at all.” Charlie patted the top of the Toyota. Once inside, she stroked the steering wheel and sighed. For all the freeway hours she'd cursed having to sit in it over the last two years, it felt marvelous now. Deputy Linda folded herself into the passenger side and slid the seat back as far as it would go.

“I don't care for these little Jap cars myself, but I'll say one thing—this sucker rides smooth as butter,” she said once they were out on 101. “Got to get me a new car. My old Pontiac's rusting out.”

It was a blustery, bright blue day. They let the wind in to tangle their hair and talked about their kids and about their mothers. And then the conversation turned to the sheriff, unprofessional on Deputy Tortle's part and unwise on Charlie's.

“You're not in love with him or anything, I hope.”

“Just attracted I guess,” Charlie admitted.

“Yeah, well he's got three exes who'll tell you not to get involved. Why do I have the feeling you already are?”

“Has he given you any indication of when I can go home? I mean if he gave the car back—”

“Soon as we figure out how your prints got on the revolver probably, and maybe know more about how Michael died. I think he gave you back the car because he doesn't think your snooping around will hurt the case. That would be one reason I could think of. Or that you're not in any danger now. Or that without charging you with anything he can't hold onto the car any longer. Or that, left on your own, you might do something to implicate yourself as the killer. Or,” they'd pulled up at the curb next to the Moot County Courthouse and Linda unfolded herself out, then leaned down to finish the sentence through the open window, “that running around loose you might flush out the killer. That'd be my guess.”

The drive back to Moot Point didn't look as bright. The sheriff was probably using Charlie and letting her think she was using him. The guilt set in again. Charlie decided guilt made sex better at the time and lousy later.

She could see the wreck of the
Peter Iredale
from 101. From here it looked tiny and inconsequential. How much stock could she put in those crummy dreams anyway?

Once back in the village, her first stop was the Earth Spirit. Jack was just opening up and he looked terrible.

“Writer's block?” she asked half in jest and half to belay the dark look on his face.

He rubbed at an unshaven chin. “Bad OOBE last night.”

She trailed him to his living quarters where he lifted a coffee mug and swirled the liquid around his mouth like TV cowboys once did whisky. “Worse than a bad trip in the days of chemical blowout.”

“Where do you go, Jack, when you leave your body?” Charlie crawled up on a kitchen stool, idly fingering the wooden handles of some cutlery set out to dry. Jack's bed seemed always unmade but he kept tidy control on his kitchen.

“Usually wherever I think hard enough I want to go.” He hit the counter with the flat end of a fist. Charlie and the cutlery jumped. “Damn! Why is this happening now? Now when I've got a book contract?”

“According to Paige, this isn't your first bad experience.” Charlie began to wonder how deeply she wanted to go into this. How much of it, through the power of suggestion, would transfer to her own dreams which, what she could remember of them, seemed bad enough now.

“I used to panic thinking I couldn't get back and my body would die without me in it and I'd just float aimlessly forever or spin off into some void … but then when I gained some control it became a wondrous freedom, a soaring freedom, freedom from the half-substantiated myths of modern, soulless science. I explained all that in the chapter you read, didn't I?”

But last night had been different. He had not been alone. Jack had sensed others out there before. “Why wouldn't there be? This is an unusual skill I've discovered I have. But there are others, maybe lots more than I thought.” He flopped down on his bed and leaned back against the wall. “But last night there was evil out there with me. Awful evil. And I don't believe in evil.”

“How do you know it was evil? Did you see it? Did it talk to you or what?”

“It was so powerful. I don't know what else it could have been. Lately I've been going as far as an old shipwreck up the beach toward Chinook, using it as a marker on how far away from these old bones I dare go.”

“The
Peter Iredale
…” Charlie felt the surge of panic bubbles start to course through her bloodstream again. She gritted her teeth against them, drew in a breath, and tried to grin her disturbing thoughts away all at the same time.

“You got a headache?”

“Oh, no. I'm fine. It's just I've been dreaming about the
Peter Iredale
until I think I'm … I'm freaking out.”

The intense eyes forgot their hard misery and stared first at and then through her. “You know, Charlie, since you came I've been stopping off to see you on my way? You don't suppose I could be … nah, that's too … when do you usually have these dreams?”

“Sometimes when I go to sleep at night, but more often just about dawn. Why? And I don't suppose you could be what? Jack, I was having these dreams before I ever saw the
Peter Iredale.
”

“You probably saw it on book jackets or record covers, calendars. It's likely to be in any New Age store you ever went in.”

“I think this is the first one I've ever been in. Why is it on covers and calendars?”

“It's considered a center of power to a lot of people who are into that kind of thing. Not it, so much as its location. Have you ever heard of a vortex?”

“Oh, boy.” This was getting too deep for closed little minds like Charlie's. She slipped off her stool and started back through the store. “Just promise me not to stop off at my cabin again unless you're in your body, okay?”

But her client was right behind her. “About last night, I need to talk to someone, please? Did you ever sense evil, Charlie, lurking in your room when you were a kid and your parents wouldn't take you seriously? And the fear felt like it was outside your body and ready to swallow you?”

“Like a body cast.” Charlie was out on the porch before he could grab an arm and turn her to face him.

“That's it … a body cast. You think my OOBE's have something to do with your dreams? Opened up the way for you?”

“I don't know. I don't want to know. I want the dreams to end. You don't believe in evil. I don't believe in OOBE's.” But Charlie would sure feel better if she knew for a fact she'd seen a picture of the
Peter Iredale
before she came to the Oregon Coast.

When Charlie knocked on the back door of Gladys and Olie Bergkvist's home, even the dogs seemed subdued. Gladys opened the door looking old and saggy but not terminal, not infected from heavy burns. Charlie stepped inside. “I'm so relieved you're all right. You
are
all right?”

“Yeah, I'm better. Hung over more than anything. You were there last night, weren't you? I remember all you helping me. I appreciate it. You want some tea?”

“Nothing, thank you.” Charlie had finally learned the proper response for Moot Point. But she sat at the kitchen table and watched in awe as Gladys shuffled about the room in bedroom slippers and a short-sleeved duster imprinted with posies and berries. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, and Joe crowded at her heels and narrowly missed tripping her up when she turned back to the table with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. The arm that should have had the skin falling off, or whatever severe burns do, looked much the same as the other arm and didn't appear swollen or that painful to use.

The kitchen and attached family room with TV and fireplace overlooked a sunken living room and the wall of windows displaying the village and the bay. Green leafy plants and decorative pillows replaced the art works Charlie would have expected here. The furniture was fussy and ruffled and in cranberry-colored prints with bold splashes of blue for contrast, walls and drapes white, carpets a light cream. What Libby and her friends couldn't do to that carpet in a half-hour snack-and-soda session.…

Gladys dunked buttered toast in her tea and slurped it. “Sorry, but when I don't feel good this calms my stomach.”

Gladys was the only villager who had ever shown any sign of fear of Charlie. She wasn't showing any now. Neither were the poodles puddled at their feet watching Gladys, her tea, and her toast with concentrated longing. Had Gladys been the only one to fear Charlie because everyone else had known from the beginning that Charlie had not shot Georgette Glick? Because there was no motive or any sign of a connection between Charlie and the victim? Or because they all knew who did?

“You weren't as badly burned last night as I thought.”

Gladys pushed her sleeve up to expose a portion of her shoulder. “Skin's a little tight and scaly feeling up here. Paige, bless her, got there in time or it would have been real bad.” She took her dishes to the sink and hoisted up the lower half of the window over it to let in the air, as if to prove how little damage had been done to her arm. “But I suppose what you really came here to do is ask more questions about Michael.”

Charlie was thinking of asking about Gladys's husband, Olie, instead, when a series of gunshots split the air and Charlie hit the floor in a sea of poodles.

The dogs darted at her, yapping. One even came up and nipped her chin.

“Here, Philomena, stop that. What's the matter with you?” Gladys grabbed up the offender with her burned arm. “Did she hurt you? Doesn't look like the skin is broken. Sorry, but my lovlies aren't used to someone falling to the floor that way. You have the need to vomit or something?”

“Didn't you hear the gunshots? Get down,” Charlie ordered.

Another rang out but Gladys sat back in her chair, Philomena still in her arms, and laughed in sharp bursts. “That? That's a truck backfiring up on the highway. Happens all the time.”

“How can you be sure?” But Charlie rose hesitantly and slipped into her chair, staying slouched down, though, to keep a low profile just in case.

“Because nobody shoots off a gun this close to people's houses.” Gladys brought her mirth under control but a spreading stain flushed her face and neck at the effort. “Might kill somebody.”

Charlie was about to point out Georgette Glick was shot right here in the village when Paige Magill appeared at the window screen without her smile and dimples. “Gladys, has the sheriff been here yet? He was just over to my place asking about poisonous houseplants and I—”

“Paige, come on in and have some tea. Jack's agent's here and she thought those backfires up on one-oh-one were gunshots. Can you believe it?” Gladys continued a steady flow of chatter until she had Paige safely shut up and sitting at the kitchen table.

Charlie refused to cooperate. “Somebody poisoned Michael with a houseplant?”

“Who said that?” Gladys's flush paled. “The sheriff?”

“Nobody said that.” Paige shot them both an unfathomable look before the almond-shaped eyes regained their placid assuredness. “Sheriff Bennett was just asking me about the aloe treatment I gave your burns last night. He threatened to report me to somebody or other for practicing medicine without a license. That's not fair. He wouldn't have said that if I'd smeared some over-the-counter salve on you.”

“He's full of bluster, Wes Bennett. Don't let him get to you.” But Gladys had grown as somber as Paige.

Charlie agreed with Gladys about Wes and knew the two women were waiting for her to leave so they could talk. She would get nothing more out of Gladys. But she gave Paige a parting shot. “Have you talked to Jack? He had a ba-ad OOBE last night. And I did too.”

Outside, Charlie stood looking up at Michael's loft. Had he been poisoned by a houseplant? Paige would certainly know all about them. But why would she poison Michael? Obviously because of something Charlie didn't know.

Everyone had insinuated to death that Michael had killed himself driving off the cliff, drunk. Or, because he was a creative artist type and moody, had committed suicide just driving off the cliff. But Charlie worked with arty people and they were often embarrassingly normal and rarely so silly as to drive off a cliff to commit suicide—the chances of ending up a human vegetable rather than dead being so obvious. Better and surer ways to achieve that sort of end abounded, and creative people had been known to come up with dillies.

Besides, the only time Charlie saw Michael he was anything but suicidal.

Chapter 27

Charlie had just reached the corner in front of the Earth Spirit, when a car with California license plates backed from in front of Frank Glick's house into a blacktopped drive behind it and turned around to head up to 101. Charlie was headed in the same direction but stopped suddenly to stare at the street running alongside the Glick trailer home. What did the Glicks drive? Why did it matter? Then again, why not? Charlie had to do something.

So she parked and walked across the street to peer behind Frank's trailer. At the end of the short drive sat Clara Peterson's old Ford. This was
her
off-street parking. A narrow band of weed grass ran between it and the Glicks'. Charlie continued on up past Clara's where an elderly but spotless Buick rested on a similar parking area. It must belong to Mary and Norma. So where did the Glicks park?